Crime victim Chris Soteriou working to help others

Carolyn Webb

A millionaire Melbourne businessman is setting up a centre to help other victims of crime, four years after his wife, Vicky, and her lover tried to kill him in a Fitzroy back street.

Chris Soteriou is raising $1 million to set up a house in inner Melbourne where victims of violent crime appearing in court can get legal advice, counselling and accommodation.

In an exclusive interview with Fairfax Media on the release of a book on the case, Love You to Death, Mr Soteriou told how the physical and mental scars remain since the night when Ari Dimitrakis slit his throat and stabbed him six times, as Vicky looked on.

Vicky Soteriou Photo: Joe Armao

But a greater pain is the estrangement from his oldest daughter. Just 13 at the time of the attack on January 2, 2010, and staying with her maternal grandparents after Vicky’s arrest, she begged him to get her mum out of jail.

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In January, after four years of no contact, father and daughter met in the presence of a counsellor, but his daughter broke down, he says, saying ‘‘that I’m the reason why her mum’s in jail and she wished I got killed’’.

Mr Soteriou said his daughter emailed to apologise but there was no further contact.

‘‘She has been the biggest victim out of this. Such a vulnerable, beautiful age, to go through something like this’’.

He blames himself for not seeing Vicky’s ‘‘manipulative and destructive’’ ways.

Mr Soteriou believes greed was the motive for the murder plot. Vicky stood to gain $6 million from his death in life insurance, property and other assets.

Through sex, and vows of eternal love, she convinced her lover, married drug addict and failed limousine driver Dimitrakis – ‘‘a pawn’’, says Soteriou – to stab her husband and make it look like a robbery.

After Mr Soteriou woke from his coma and the police zeroed in on Vicky and Ari’s sordid affair – which was to involve 2000 erotic text messages, getting hidden tattoos and pashing at a cemetery while buying a grave – Vicky confessed she and Dimitrakis were responsible for the stabbing.

Then, at her trial for attempted murder in September 2011, she pleaded not guilty, arguing that only a besotted Dimitrakis was behind the stabbing.

A jury disagreed, finding Vicky was the mastermind and sentencing her to a minimum of nine years in jail. In exchange for giving evidence against Vicky, Dimitrakis was found guilty of intentionally causing serious injury and is serving five years.

Mr Soteriou, now 48, lives with his new partner Alex and twins. Before the attack he was an engineering consultant earning $600,000 a year. Now he is a director of five businesses including a reception centre, but chiefly considers himself father to the twins.

He has spent $300,000 opposing Vicky’s bids for access to the twins, and on contesting property ownership.

He says the court process can feel like being attacked again and so he is settng up the PowerHouse Retreat, a ‘‘solace house’’ modelled on the Ronald McDonald houses that help families of sick children. He has set up website powerhouseretreat.com.au

Love You to Death: A Story of Sex, Betrayal and Murder Gone Wrong, by Megan Norris, is published by the Five Mile Press.